Mind Waves
by teh liz
Summary: Jayne should not be brushing River's hair. [Rayne. PostBDM.]


**Author's Notes:** Contains spoilers for the series and BDM. This was originally supposed to be for a friend who's been having a crappy time of it (and to be honest, so have I and I've been writing completely self-indulgent fic for a week and a half), and while it was originally supposed to be small enough to fit in a comment, I could tell that it was going to grow too fast. And it did. So I figured what the hell, I'll share with everyone.  
**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon owns them. Fox killed them.

Jayne really shouldn't have obliged the first time River brought him her brush and sat down in front of him. Or the second. After the third time, he told himself, that was _it_. He was putting his foot down. No more brushing the crazy girl's hair. He was starting to get _ideas_ and them ideas were less than pure. The doc and the captain would have him strung up in the cargo bay by his toenails before he could so much as say, "I was just thinking." And even if he said that, he knew there would be someone with some smart ass comment about him thinking.

So when she brought him the brush this time, late at night and in the galley as it was, even though he probably could have gotten away with it, he said, "No."

He heroically ignored it when her face fell slightly and she repeated, "No?"

"No." If he repeated it, maybe she'd take the hint and get away instead of driving him mad.

"But Jayne has set a precedent for this opportunity," she argued, trying to push the brush into his hand. Her hand looked tiny, curled around the handle of the brush, and he briefly wondered how the same hand could look so much bigger curled around the controls of Serenity. He pushed it back, and she pushed again, in a reverse tug-of-war. She looked like a good, stiff wind would blow her over, but she was _strong._

"Jayne shouldn't be brushin' your hair, girl," he told her roughly. _Makes me all matter of uncomfortable and-_

"-the doc would kill you." He slowly realized that River had been repeating the thoughts as they ran through his head. "The mathematics for that are not favorable - statistically speaking, you are a better shot than the doctor and for him to get the upper hand physically, he would have to employ inertia and too many other variables to quantify at this point in time."

He didn't know whether to be enraged or confused. "Too many - huh?"

"Jayne would win." She had that smile on her face that showed she knew she was going to win this argument.

"Yeah, but the cap'n's the same way about you your brother is an' I don't know if I could take 'im in a fair fight."

"You're right. Captain shoots first," River considered it, and then brightened. "If you had the element of surprise on your side, your chances are greatly improved, and-"

"Wait just a gorram second," he said, stopping her before she started talking about inner-sha and quantificationness and things that made his mind spin. "You're goin' through all this t'get your hair brushed?"

Her look changed to that "You Don't Know Your Pi Gu From A Hole In The Ground, Do You?" Look that she gave people every once in awhile. "She isn't just getting her hair brushed. She is getting her hair brushed by _Jayne._"

"Jayne ain't nothin' special. Brush it your own self," he muttered, dropping her hand quickly and moving around behind the counter, just to put some kind of structure between him and River. He was going to keep saying no. He had a resolve of steel, hardened by years of being paid to shoot to kill. He'd refused the wishes of dying men, he could say _no_ to a girl who wanted her hair brushed.

"Jayne, _please,_" she begged, leaning over the counter to look up at him, all big brown doe eyes and batting eyelashes and a pleading expression – gorramit, what did they teach her in that Academy in between brain cutting sessions? "Precision. Weaponry. Martial arts. Speed training."

"_Damnit_ girl, get out of my head." Now he was annoyed.

"Inara was wrong. _River_ likes hearing what you're thinking," she gave him a smile that went straight to his knees.

"Gimme that thing and go take a seat," he said, snatching the brush from her hand.

She flashed him another smile and sat in one of the kitchen chairs. He approached her from behind, carefully, ever since the incident in the bar on Beaumonde he'd had reservations about sneaking up on her. Before she could remark on it like he was sure that she would, he began running the brush through her long, dark hair, steadying her head with his free hand.

River's eyes fell closed as her brain began to settle into the relaxed rhythm of the brush, and she felt Jayne's brain grow calm as well. With her hair to concentrate on, he didn't have to think about what job they would find when they landed next, or who was going to get shot up this time or anything else, just the simplicity of a brush and soft hair. Ooh, she hoped he'd braid it again.

She'd gone and gotten a knot in it. "Girl, do you ever brush this yourself?" he grunted, working at it with as much care as he'd ever used with any of his collection of guns.

"Why should she, when she can talk Jayne into it," she replied without opening her eyes.

Oh, this was a fine kettle of fish he'd gotten himself into over her. A fine kettle indeed. "Got it," he announced triumphantly when the knot gave way and became a uniform strand once again. His fingers began to automatically thread through the strands, and he heard River emit a small, contented sigh, like a sleeping kitten who was being petted. Concentrating on her liking it gave him a reason to not concentrate on why _he_ was liking it. He was only grateful that he didn't have to be looking at her face, that would surely be the end of anything resembling self-restraint. He took up a chunk of hair at the crown of her head and separated it into three sections. In the part it created, he caught sight of a thin line of discolored skin. He paused for a moment, touched a finger to it. _That's where they cut into her._

"They were doing such good work," she said in a low tone that made him a mite uncomfortable. "Take a girl's brain apart, give her knee-jerk reactions all over her body. Make her a weapon."

"Weren't right what they done to you," Jayne said, loud enough so that River could hear it, but soft enough that if someone were in the hallway listening, he could credibly deny it. "Cuttin' into a brain like that, don't make any sense," he added before beginning to twist the strands into a plait.

River's heart jumped – really, she knew it wasn't her heart, organs did not have the mobility to do so by themselves, but it felt like it did. It was perhaps the most heartfelt thing she'd ever heard the mercenary say to her, and it made her feel… happy. An unfamiliar pang she didn't know how to rid herself of settled in her chest. She contented herself with sitting and letting his thoughts wash over her brain like a wave onto the beach. His mind was… not simple, but it worked differently. Jayne thought about one thing at a time, and it was uncomplicated and not disturbing. Kaylee was much the same way, but became very easily excited. The captain's thoughts were too many, too fast, and Zoe's were filled with war horrors and Wash at the helm with a Reaver harpoon in his chest. Simon worried a lot, and so did Inara, but about different things.

It hurt to be exposed to those thoughts day in and day out, and it was tiring to try not to hear them. It was much the same way how when someone tells you not to think about something, that thing is all you can think about. Not hearing a person think could magnify it, make it uncontrollable and loud. Some days it was unbearable, scarring her brain until the only refuge was in her own bunk, underneath the blankets and in the dark. One person's easy, languorous thoughts were a rejuvenation.

"You got somethin' to tie it off with?" he asked. She jumped and took the band off her wrist and held it over her shoulder for him to take. His thought changed when he took it, a jump in the activity that read as one not unlike the pang she couldn't identify in her own self. "There, now you got your hair all done up fancy-like," he continued, and she turned around to face him, kneeling on the chair. "Satisfied?"

"Satisfied," she repeated reluctantly. _Your thoughts are quiet. They don't hurt. Let me stay, don't push me away to another part of the ship._

She was staring at him so intense-like, he could almost tell she was fishing around in his brain again – for what, who knew. But she didn't say nothing. "What?" he asked, the question coming a bit more irritated than he'd possibly intended.

"You're not as loud as everyone else," she said plainly. She sounded fragile. Like something was breaking her on the inside and it was going to come bursting through her skin. Without warning, she reached up and threw her arms around his neck, and he caught her in order to save her from falling to the floor with the chair. Now he had two armfuls of crazy and absolutely no idea what to do with her. She seemed to be – aw, damnit, was she _crying?_

She was. He felt her tears wet his neck and the collar of his shirt, and he recalled Simon's words in the hospital on Ariel: _She feels everything. She can't not._ "Girl… _River_, c'mon. Ain't no reason in the 'verse to be cryin' right now."

"She doesn't want to leave," she declared, her grip on Jayne not lessening one bit.

"What, leave the ship? That ain't gonna happen. Captain ain't thrown ya off yet, ain't much could make him do it now."

"No, leave _you,_" she said impatiently, her tears stopped.

For a minute the only sound Jayne could hear was the thudding of his heart in his ears and her breath on his neck. His arms were _still_ full of crazy, crying girl and he _still_ wasn't sure what to do with her. "Say that 'gain?" he managed, unsure he'd heard her right or if he'd been hearing what he wanted to hear, or if he even knew what he wanted to hear.

"Your thoughts are quiet," she whispered into his neck. "They heal what's been torn and rearranged and picked apart and killed and regenerated and savagely raped and used for purposes not of her choosing." She still wasn't letting go. "You won't let the girl fall, will you, Jayne?"

"You ain't gonna fall, I got 'hold of you," he said, as tenderly as he dared, lest his tough and manly exterior be compromised. As if brushing and braiding her hair didn't already do such a thing. "But I _am_ gonna set you down 'cause you're a mite heavy for me to be carryin' around when I don't got to."

"She understands," she answered simply, loosening her hold on him and sliding to stand with her own two feet on the floor, each touch like electricity, like they weren't even wearing clothing. He decided that was a road he better not travel down, even in his own mind. "_Xie xie,_" she told him, looking up with those liquid eyes of hers.

"Ain't nothin'," he said. "Now you go on an' pilot or whatever it is you got to be doin', and no more of that cryin' _go se_. Your brother's gonna be thinkin' 'm bein' improper or somesuch."

"You wanted to be," she told him, straight-faced as you pleased. He must have given her a shocked look, but she giggled like the girl she was and quickly kissed him on the cheek before turning and making for the bridge, but not before calling something that sounded like "copper for a kiss" over her shoulder.

Jayne stood for a moment before going the opposite way, down to the cargo bay – couldn't have her thinking he was following her around like a rutting schoolboy, even if he _would_ just be going to his bunk. The girl was going to drive him nuts. Maybe he'd be as crazy as she was in the end.

As long as it ended with her and him, he couldn't bring himself to care all that much.


End file.
